Field & Vine proprietor Pascal Chureau talks with guests during a Dinner in the Field event. Photo courtesy of Field & Vine Events.
From seed catalog to dinner table
Fifteen years ago, a farmer walked into Pascal Chureau’s Allium restaurant in West Linn, Oregon, carrying a stack of seed catalogs.
“He’s like, ‘Hey, what do you want me to grow for you?’” Chureau remembers.
Chureau started marking pages. The farmer started growing produce for the restaurant. Then the two had another idea: Why not serve dinner at the farm?
They spread the word among restaurant guests. About 150 people showed up. Chureau remembers the evening as “a little chaotic,” with trips back to the restaurant for more food and wine and the lavender farmer’s kids making lemonade.
The next day, Chureau and his wife sat on their couch and decided they might be onto something. They did four dinners the next year. Then Chureau started knocking on doors, asking farmers if they could host dinners on their farms.
Fifteen years later, farms and wineries approach Field & Vine about hosting dinners. The series has grown to roughly 40 dinners a year.
But don’t clean up on their account.
“Leave the tractors where they are and leave the chickens roaming around,” Chureau tells the farmers. “It’s a farm dinner.”
Field & Vine needs little more than water and power. The crew brings the rest.
“It’s arriving at 2:30 and then building a 110-person dining room and a kitchen for that amount of people out of two vans,” Chureau says. “That’s like a circus.”
By the time guests arrive, long tables are set with flowers and candles.
“We’re the magicians,” Chureau says.
Field & Vine proprietor Pascal Chureau plates a course during a Dinner in the Field event. Photo courtesy of Field & Vine Events.
Sometimes even the magicians have to improvise.
At a dinner near Wilsonville about a decade ago, pouring rain turned the farm into a muddy mess. Chureau was ready to cancel until the farmer showed him an unfinished farm store with a roof, but no windows or doors.
The crew swept out the construction debris and started setting tables. Two guests who were contractors found plastic sheeting in their truck and fashioned makeshift windows and doors.
Chureau remembers it as one of their best dinners.
The menu can come together just as quickly. Chureau often doesn’t know exactly what he’ll serve until the day before. Weather matters, along with what the farm has available and what’s in the glass.
“If it’s mainly a Pinot Noir winery, I’m going to focus those ingredients on that Pinot Noir,” Chureau says. “If it’s a Cab, I’m going to do something a little more hearty, maybe on the protein side.”
But the food is only half the point.
Chureau wants guests sitting in a vineyard talking to the winemaker or next to the farmer who grew the peppers on their plate. He wants them asking questions, wandering the farm or vineyard and coming back later to buy the wine, produce or flowers.
Guests gather among the vines for a Field & Vine Dinner in the Field. Photo courtesy of Field & Vine Events.
“You can go to a restaurant and get similar quality food,” he says. “But they’re not going to get that experience. They’re not going to get the farm thing.”
The next table is being set Oct. 17 at Wind Mountain Ranch in Stevenson, Washington, Field & Vine’s first dinner at the Columbia River Gorge property. Syncline Winery will join Chureau and his crew for the seven-course dinner. Tickets are $175, and, appropriately enough, the dinner happens rain or shine.